


Family Business

by andthebluestblue



Series: Running in the Family [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 17:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthebluestblue/pseuds/andthebluestblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy meets Siobhan Moran when he is ten years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a multi-chapter piece with each chapter working more or less as a stand-alone, so more will be posted as it's written, with updated warnings for each.

At work, Siobhan introduces herself the same way, every time. Tommy is familiar with it; the charming smile, cool handshake, “Siobhan,” and then the very slight pause, cock of the head, “Moriarty.” And then a longer pause, to watch the blood drain from their faces.

It’s not what’s on her birth certificate, of course; on paper, she’s a Moran. But Tommy has known she was a Moriarty since he was ten years old, and she was eight—Moriartys, he knows, are made not by blood or inheritance but by dark neat hair and eyes, slender pale fingers, the inexplicable sharpness of ground-down teeth; the tap-tap-tap of a pen right before it is driven into flesh, a tendency towards dramatics and the strangely specific way they handle blood, lazy swiping across skin. 

He has thought of Siobhan as a Moriarty the way he began, at twelve years old, to tentatively think of himself as a Moran—if dark hair and eyes and violence make a Moriarty, then surely there are equivalent traits that make a Moran: blondeness and wide shoulders, the ability to look scruffy in a two-thousand dollar suit, a sixth sense for brewing trouble, movements like the steady motions of a loaded gun. 

  



	2. First Lessons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: Blood.

Sebastian begins giving Tommy lessons when he is ten years old. He has been with Siobhan six months, long enough to work out some things on his own; warning signs, mostly, when to hold her shoulders and when to get out of the way. 

But one day Sebastian walks in on him trying to hold Siobhan away from his face while she hisses and rages and carves blood out of his arms, set off by the sound of his pencil on paper scratching, she says later, against the afternoon sun. Sebastian makes an angry noise, and Tommy has a panicked moment of guilt, pre-echoes of _Take your hands off my daughter_  and _What the hell did you do to her_ , before Sebastian moves into the room and takes both of Siobhan's wrists in his hand, gentle and unyielding, performs some complicated twisting folding gesture that ends with her face pressed against his chest, arms pinned between their bodies, his hands soothing on her back and head. He looks at Tommy, and there is pity, and resignation, and something else that Tommy cannot place, some impossible combination of pride and disappointment. He doesn't say anything for several long moments, and Tommy waits with him, until Siobhan is still and silent, and past that, as well, until she is fidgeting impatiently. Finally he releases her. "Run and find your Mum, sweetheart. I think he has a new computer virus to show you." Siobhan nods and slips out, closing the door behind her. Sebastian thumps down onto the bed, rubbing his face, and beckons Tommy closer. He checks Tommy's arms, asks "Did she get you anywhere else?" and at Tommy's head shake, stands up again. "They look all right, but let's get some antiseptic on there just in case. Do we need a cover? Are your parents going to ask questions?"

"No," Tommy says, quickly, "They never notice." Seb pauses, then, before continuing out the door and to the bathroom. "She does this a lot?" he asks, and when Tommy just shrugs, Sebastian shakes his head. "I should have realized. She's been better—I thought maybe she was just settling in, growing up some." Tommy doesn't have anything to say, so he stays silent, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Sebastian, rifling through the medicine chest, glances at him, and sighs. "Christ, kid, relax. I'm not mad at you. I wish you had come to me sooner—well. You did the best you could." Tommy relaxes, a little, at that, and as he is rinsing out the cuts (only three of them, really, the rest are just scratches) Sebastian sighs. "Look, Tommy—do you...uh. Well. I guess—how do you feel about Siobhan?" Tommy gapes at him, and Sebastian winces. "Okay, bad phrasing. I'm just trying to work out--you're, what, two years older than Siobhan?" and at Tommy's nod, continues, "Ten, then. Good. Look, you're just a kid--I don't want to get you involved in—well. In what we have in this family. Ten is too young to be making choices about the rest of your life." Tommy waits, patient. He does not understand what Mr. Moran is trying to say, but it is about Siobhan, and him, and what they are together, and he is willing to wait, for that. Sebastian seems to have run out of steam; he's just leaning against the wall, shoulders tight, looking at Tommy. Tommy tries to stand a little straighter, hold his shoulders in an echo of that tightness, look older, like someone Sebastian can trust with choices and knowledge and his daughter. 

Finally Seb snorts, his shoulders releasing. "Hell, kid. You've already decided, haven't you." Tommy—middle child of seven children, raised to a life of quiet continuity and the slow frantic rhythm of passing seasons—thinks of Siobhan, the delicate way she moves, her fingers blurring over a keyboard, the pop and fizz of her anger. He meets Sebastian's eyes. 

"Yes, sir," he says, quietly. He is not sure "decide" is what he did—the hopeless consuming stumble into Siobhan—but he does not think it will help to point this out. Sebastian grins, reaches out and ruffles his hair, and Tommy—he does not lean into it, exactly, but he does not move away. 

"Welcome to the family, then." Sebastian says. "Now, if she's going to lose it, the first thing to do is make sure there isn't anything dangerous within reach," and his hair is golden and glowing in the afternoon sun, and the air smells clean and fresh and Tommy's arms do not hurt at all. 


	3. Practical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None that I can think of.

At first, what Sebastian teaches Tommy is simple, immediately useful things, mostly about Siobhan (and, indirectly, Jim). Specific things, like why it’s important to know the difference between boredom and irritation, how thin the line is, lists of objects that could shift that line—and which of those objects may suddenly become a weapon. Simpler things, too, about taking care of anyone, not just a Moriarty—how long to steep different teas, how to fix a popped seam or prevent a stain from setting. But after a year or so the lessons take on new characteristics, things that seem less and less related to anything Tommy needs to know, even for Siobhan. How to clean a gun (which neither Tommy nor Siobhan is allowed to handle loaded yet), which in the country makes some sense, but also how to disable a grown man, how to recognize the flow of power in a room, the difference between a defensible building and a trap, how to turn one into the other. Things that make Tommy want to ask, _who are you, where you do you come from—what did you do, you and that other man, who moves like he has different bones, who you look at like you are lost and dying in the desert and he is the sun setting, relief and ruin. Why do you know these things._

He does not ask, because—mostly because he does not want to be rude, invasive, remind Sebastian of anything the man wants to forget. But also because he’s not sure he wants to know.

So he doesn’t remark on the new lessons, and Sebastian doesn’t offer any explanation, and Siobhan doesn’t seem to think they are at all odd. But then, Siobhan has been learning these things for years—Tommy questions that, though, since he knows how quickly Siobhan learns, and how quickly idleness can turn bad.

It is Sebastian’s way of being—not friendly, really, but his way of forming a connection with this boy his daughter claimed. Tommy pays attention, of course, learns everything Sebastian shows him, but he doesn’t assign much importance to it. Not until later.

 

  


  


After school, a spring afternoon, and Tommy and Siobhan are alone in the kitchen—Sebastian still at work and Mr. Moran out on some errand from which he will return humming and immaculate, smelling faintly of blood. There is a ring at the bell,  a man in a uniform too well-fitting ( _they expect you to look for something that fits badly, see_ , Sebastian had explained, hands busy cutting vegetables while Siobhan and Mr. Moran murmur over some electronic equipment at the table.   _So they'll be prepared, they'll look neat, if they're good the uniform might even look worn. But that kind of uniform only comes in two conditions—brand new and so old it's falling apart—and they never, ever fit. Never trust a man in well-fitted clothes._ Jim made an outraged noise from the table, throwing his head back, and Sebastian grinned and winked at Tommy. _Criminals, every one of them._ Siobhan gave them a reproving look, tugging Jim's attention back to their careful deconstruction: "Focus, Mum—how do I know it's a continuous system? This bit?"). It all runs through Tommy's head, memories crisp as new paperbacks, and without thinking he opens the next memory—that room in the basement, combination 445 and hit speed dial seven on the phone to let Sebastian know, break a plate—one of the blue ones—on the kitchen floor in case Mr. Moran gets home first, and he's moving into action while the man still has his finger on the buzzer, Siobhan still making cross noises at the interruption to her calculations. When Sebastian gets to the house the man is long gone, of course, but Tommy and Siobhan are still in the basement, safe, Siobhan barely even aware of the change in surroundings, caught up in her work.

Sebastian sweeps her into his arms, his face going haggard for just a moment, and Tommy treasures that even more than the feel of Sebastian's hand firm on his shoulder, the warm "Well done, Tommy;" Sebastian let him see something that he never showed to Siobhan or even Jim. The trust. 

He definitely treasures it more than Mr. Moran's present, a few days later—the trigger finger of the man. He presents it with a flourish, beaming, and Tommy is not sure what to do with it—preserve it, somehow? Mount it like a trophy? He looks beseechingly at Sebastian, who pulls him aside later and takes it from him. 

"He does try, you know." Sebastian says quietly, not looking at Tommy. "He just...doesn't understand sometimes. You know how they are." Tommy thinks of Siobhan's face, her confusion and awkwardness on his birthday, offering him an immaculately wrapped box containing seventeen keys. "Yes,” Tommy says. “They both do." 


	4. Everybody in Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I cannot even.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not quite as well-written as previous chapters, so I apologize for that. No warnings. Spoiler-y disclaimers at end.

It begins when Siobhan is thirteen, and working from that, Tommy knows he must have been about fifteen. 

There were signs of it before then, of course, and Siobhan notices, but had no particularly compelling reason to alert Tommy--not that there was any reason not to, of course, but knowledge was power and power shared was power halved. At least.

So for Tommy it began on a Tuesday afternoon in the bookshop. Siobhan had finished rifling through their biology section—the selection never changed, but Tommy liked watching her fingers flick over the spines, almost as fast as her eyes, liked listening to her small noises of outraged dismissal, secure in the knowledge that they weren't about him. 

Despite her disdain Siobhan finds two or three books she doesn't own yet—if Tommy were mathematically inclined, he might wonder how a book section of less than a hundred books has supported a three-a-week habit for four or five years; if he were observationally inclined, he might wonder what exactly these books do to offend Siobhan, over and over, to allow this cycle of destruction and purchase. 

But Tommy cares very little what Siobhan does with her things, as long as it is safe, and even less about numbers.  So instead he waits at the counter for Kayla to ring up the books while Siobhan wanders outside, staring up at the sky. As she hands the books to him, Kayla smiles approvingly, and says "Good on you for carrying your lady's things, Tom. We need a few more old fashioned gentlemen like you in this town." Tommy smiles and nods, takes the books, waiting for her words to work themselves through his mind and resolve into meaning. 

It's not that it takes long—because Tommy is not slow the way they always assume—but he is nonplussed and needs to let the view settle before touching it. Siobhan is busy, still watching the sky and murmuring numbers to herself, and all he has to do is occasionally guide her around potholes and hedges. 

 

What he cannot understand is _your_. "Your lady." The rest of the statement is recognizable, the meaningless small talk of tradition, distilled and identified years ago. But the sudden addition of possession—that is new. 

Not the idea of ownership; he knows, and Siobhan knows, and Sebastian and Mr. Moran and his parents and teachers and really, everybody knows, that Tommy belongs to Siobhan. That if you say anything to Tommy then you are saying it to Siobhan as well (and that Siobhan has a much shorter temper). Teachers stopped trying to explain things to him in class; but they had also stopped trying to keep Siobhan from talking to him during tests,  which made things much easier. Easier for the teachers, anyway; Tommy found Siobhan's style of instruction both more informative and infinitely more alarming— _Tommy, if I have to explain coefficients to you one more time I am going to make you choose your least favorite limb and then I am going to remove two centimeters of skin from it._

But no one has ever called Siobhan his. Until now, and he sorts through the situation, looking for changes. 

The books are not unusual: a drug manual and two anatomy books, standard fare. The weather is clear, which is not unusual. They are both wearing school uniforms, and Siobhan did not speak to the clerk. Tommy did not say anything he has not said a dozen times before (greeting, response-and-return of health inquiry, thank you), or do anything, really, other than watch Siobhan. That is normal, surely? But he remembers the look on Kayla's face when he turned away from the window to pay her, right before she broke the script. 

He starts watching for that look on other people, and it is more common than he thought. It is on the teachers when Siobhan scowls and bends over his homework; it shows up in flashes—between the usual tolerance and irritation—when he raises his hand for the lavatory, and carries a furious hissing Siobhan out to calm down in the hall. It is on his parent's faces when Siobhan fetches him on the way to school—and most importantly, it is on Sebastian's face. 

It is Sebastian's face that lets Tommy work it out, because he knows his face so well and because Sebastian makes sense to him. It's not the way Sebastian looks at Mr. Moran, or the way he looks at Siobhan—it's a sort of echo of that look, though that's not the right word, and Tommy is frustrated trying to understand it. It is a reflection—water watching sun bounce off it's surface. Sebastian looks at him the way you meet your eyes in a mirror, in that moment before recognition. And Tommy understands, not in a flash or gradual realization but as the next step in a careful process. 

Everybody in town knows that Tommy O'Doyle is in love with Siobhan Moran. 

 Tommy is filled with a sort of revulsion at the sheer ridiculousness of it—like the way Siobhan looks at a maths teacher after they miscalculate. And maybe it is that sudden flash of rare fellow-feeling that makes it more urgent than anything that he tell Siobhan, that she tell him how to fix it and why they think it. Explain to him again why most people don't matter. 

"My parents think we're in love." Tommy is careful, here, because parents mean it is important, but she might not know about Sebastian and he doesn't want to panic her. 

Siobhan doesn't look up from her computer. "Yes."

He waits, but she does not have the stillness that matches one of her pauses, so he tries again. "So do all the teachers."

She hums a little, affirmatively, still not looking up, and flicks her hair away from her eyes. 

"The whole town thinks it," and she is not even pretending to respond now. Is she not listening? "Siobhan, your _father_ thinks it!" and his voice cracks, just a little. She looks up at that, finally, and he feels her focus wash over him, calming and tensing and reassuring. 

"Yes, I know." she says patiently. "Even if I hadn't already, I would have from ‘the whole town.’ My father is part of the town, Tommy; you do get repetitive."

He isn't surprised that she knows something he doesn't, but--"how did you know? When?"

She flicks a dismissive hand, glancing back at the computer screen. "About three hundred days ago, give or take seven, maybe fourteen.  And as for how--people are easy, Tommy. If you give them a simple enough equation, even they can solve it."

Tommy still feels the world shifting, a slow horror even greater than before at what this sounds like, her casual acceptance of the assumption and talk of simple equations. "But—Siobhan. I. I don't think, I don't—" she looks impatient now, almost cross, and that is familiar, a relief, even more when she says "Do try to keep up, Tommy, and not be more of a fool than you must. Of course you're not. You're gay." 

And the floor is gone again, and Tommy really does not need any excitement ever again, after this. "What." he says blankly, not a question, just a verbal mark of time, flat and meaningless as a clock's tick. At her raised eyebrows, he quickly says "Not that there's anything wrong with it, it's fine, but I—" 

She's drumming her fingers, not quite a danger sign, but not a good one, either. "Don't be ridiculous, Tommy. Of course you are." She pauses, and adds reflectively, "I've been rather thinking I might be as well. Working with unfamiliar territory doesn't particularly appeal to me." 

Tommy manages, "Being gay isn't a choice," rote recitation from school presentations, because he cannot begin to address anything else she said.  Siobhan makes another dismissive gesture. "Well, no, not for most people. But I don't see why I shouldn't get to choose." Siobhan turns back to the computer, clearly finished with the conversation. Tommy isn't finished, not at all, but he's not sure how to voice another objection without repeating himself. 

So instead he sits, lets the information settle in. 

Everybody in town knows that Tommy O'Doyle is in love with Siobhan Moran—and Siobhan Moran knows Tommy O'Doyle is gay. 

 

_  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I am not saying being gay is a choice. But for Siobhan Moran it is, okay.


	5. Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian gives Tommy the Talk.

Sebastian does not make plans. Plans create one of two situations: they can work out, meaning that you’d be doing exactly what you would have done anyway, without a plan, or they fail, meaning you spend the entire time distracted by why you planned on happening, and can’t react well. Either way, they’re a waste of time.

He didn’t plan on getting kicked out of the army (though he rarely thinks about that any more, days and head too full of boxes and green hills, small dark eyes and soft hands), or meeting Jim, or—anything to do with Jim, really. He didn’t plan anything, and he certainly didn’t plan Dalkey or a child or this kind of love.

He has systems, of course, strategies and targets. But those are all short term;  _when Jim throws that knife I’ll duck under the table and then come up between him and the stove,_ or  _fish for dinner Tuesday, the roast will keep until Thursday._  Little more than intention and decisions.

But, well. It’s been more than five years, and he was starting to think that this was different enough that he could make plans. Some of them even worked—he does a lot less lifting and a lot more overseeing at ó Nualláin Movers, and every year there are more and more vegetables in the garden. And that makes him look a little further, plan a little more ahead than he has before. Siobhan will have to go to college, after all, and provisions, preparations will have to be made. She’ll have to be kept stable.

Tommy, Seb knows, is making plans as well; small ones, that Sebastian can’t always understand, but ones that work. He’s young but he’s learning, so when Sebastian moves to take a sharpened pencil away from his increasingly tense daughter and Tommy lays a hand on his arm and shakes his head, Seb leaves it. He waits for Tommy’s signal, and six minutes later when Tommy is gripping Siobhan’s wrist to hold it still while Sebastian pries the now-bloody pencil from her grasp, he looks at Tommy, and Tommy has a look of quiet triumph.

“Another ninety seconds, sir. She’s learning to hold it,” he says, later.

Tommy’s plans are all about Siobhan, Seb knows. He knows from the blank look on Tommy’s face whenever anyone brings up the family farm that Tommy is expected to someday run, or any schooling past the end of the current term. But he does have them. Sebastian makes assumptions even more rarely than plans, but—well, Tommy is getting older and no less devoted, and it’s not as though Siobhan is becoming any kinder; she’s not doing anything to encourage him. And all Tommy’s plans are about Siobhan, and even in retrospect, Sebastian can’t see what other conclusion he could have drawn.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it, of course. It’s a bit odd, statistically speaking: all of them, effectively, living under the same roof, and all of them—not really, though, Sebastian thinks. Functionally, they may all be gay, but he still has trouble linking Jim being a man with any indication of his own sexuality (still has trouble, in truth, with thinking of Jim as a man and not an event), and Jim—they’ve never discussed it, not really. Jim is small and rather prim, careful about his clothes (logically Sebastian knows that’s stereotyping, and not useful, but his gut still reads  _lime green underwear_   _and tight shirt_  as  _poof_ ) and seems to find women vaguely distasteful—but then, he’s always seemed to find men vaguely distasteful as well, and for some reason Sebastian can’t assign  _gay_  to a man who personally and carefully (gleefully, really) took all the skin off an informant’s...well. Siobhan gets that from Jim, that dark nonspecific sexuality that is not gay or straight or bisexual. Fluid, almost optional.

It makes more sense, when he thinks of it that way—one man who isn’t gay so much as partnered with a man, a man and a girl who are only gay because they are not straight; and Tommy. Who is gay. And who is not going to marry Siobhan, or love her—not the way Sebastian was expecting.

In a way, it’s a relief; he had been preparing the talks, the explanations that Moriartys do not love the way Morans do, the way most people do; that you cannot think of it like that. That when a Moriarty bleeds you, it does not quite mean  _I love you_  but it doesn’t quite not, either, and that you can never know for sure but it is all right, Tommy, it’s going to be fine, even when you never understand.

This is not that talk. This is not the talk he was expecting.

Sebastian clears his throat. “Tommy, I really don’t think—” Tommy looks at him, all trust and earnestness and fucking blue eyes—Sebastian isn’t prepared for this, has spent the last ten years learning to work through and around dark eyes; he has learned to deal with sinking, not reflection.

“Look, wouldn’t you rather talk to your parents about this?” Tommy gives him that special look of mixed horror and disdain he must have learned from Siobhan, and Sebastian tries one last time. “I’m sure there are books you could read, Tommy.”

Tommy looks at him. “No, sir. Not books,” and he looks—something. The way he always looks, solid and soft and ready, and just an edge of something else, something much more familiar and expected, the adolescent hovering between determination and embarrassment. Sebastian gives up.

He sighs. “It’s not just—you’re sure? It’s not just what Siobhan decided?”

Tommy nods, dipping slightly towards embarrassment before settling back on the knife edge. “Yes, sir.”

He’s not going to insult Tommy by asking again, though he has to fight it. He’s taken Tommy’s word on much more opaque things before, things Tommy had much less reason to know. He’ll take his word on this.

“Fine. What do you want to know?”

Tommy looks agonized for a moment. “Just—how, I guess.”

Sebastian waits.

“How you—” Tommy flounders for a moment, Seb praying that he is not asking what Seb thinks he is asking. “How you do it. I mean, not you specifically.”

He is. Sebastian had really, really been hoping that raising a Moriarty, books and calculations and all the passion boiling out in blood and not sex, meant he would never have to give the sex talk. But he can do this. He raised a Moriarty— _with_  a Moriarty, he kept Jim alive through blood and bullets and boredom, he kept himself alive through that and a war, turned down a Russian ambassador without starting an international incident (or, worse, fouling Jim’s diamond deal). He can explain gay sex to a fifteen year old.

And he does. He starts with the fact that you should never do anything you’re not comfortable with, emotionally  _or_  physically, and ends with “And you use a condom  _every time_ , Tommy, even if he says he’s clean, even if you believe him.” He stumbles a bit, in places, switches between euphemisms delicate enough for a schoolteacher and words that would have made his drill sergeant blush, but he makes it through. He feels a bit self-congratulatory, looking at Tommy—who Sebastian is, he realizes, slowly teaching everything he knows—until Tommy breaks the long pause.

“Thank you, sir. That’s...thank you. But, actually Siobhan explained all of that to me—she understands that part, so she could. I was more wondering, um, how to tell...you know, if a boy liked me. If there’s something I’m supposed to do to make sure—and if he does like me, whether I’m supposed to ask him out, or wait for him to ask me, and who’s supposed to pay. You know. How to do it. How to...like men.”

Sebastian blinks. He can hear, from the other room, Jim snickering softly. “Ah. Well. That’s a bit different, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual when writing characters that are not very nice people, Sebastian's opinions are not the author's opinions.


	6. Dinner and a Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things move along.

Sebastian pulls him aside before the dinner. Tommy’s already a bit nervous in a way he cannot put a name to; some strange embarrassed sort of distress at the thought of the two pieces of his life coming together like this. It’s not that his parents have never met the Morans before; they’ve run into each other often enough at school functions or at the market and every time it happened, his mother or Mr. Moran would say, _sometime we should really have dinner together, at least—what with the children_ , and then his mother would look fondly and pointedly at Tommy and Siobhan, or Mr. Moran would lay a firm hand on Jim’s neck and smile emptily. But somehow it never quite happened, and after a year or two Tommy came to recognize it as polite noise, like talk about the weather or _how_ are _you, really_.

 

It’s the beginning of their last year of Secondary, though, and there has been some strange shift. Now his parents are coming over for dinner and he didn’t even know until a few days ago, when Siobhan told him in the tone that made it clear he should have already been aware of it. But that wasn’t the first sign of it; a few months ago Sebastian started watching him a bit differently; the same kind of proprietary look he gets sometimes when he watches Siobhan and Jim bent over some complex system of wires or viscera, when he thinks they can’t see him. Mr. Moriarty is—well, he’s been watching Tommy, which alone is fairly new, since normally he treats Tommy as a sort of living breathing piece of furniture. But now sometimes Tommy see him out of the corner of his eye watching him with the same kind of weighing look Moriarty gets when he tries a new bread Sebastian is making.

 

Tommy isn’t smart the way Siobhan is, but he sees things. Especially differences. And his parents are having dinner with the Morans, and Siobhan is by turns dismissing him completely and focusing on him intently enough that he wishes she would find a girl to distract her, the way she did last summer, even if it still didn’t go anywhere. So when Sebastian pulls him aside, Jim and Siobhan arguing in a mostly-complacent way about whether the dining room table should be at a ninety or forty five degree angle in the other room, Tommy is prepared for the worst—to be told that, say, Mr. Moran is dying, or Siobhan has killed someone and the trial is coming up, or simply that they’ve all discussed it and Tommy doesn’t quite fit in around the house and it would be best if he didn’t come round anymore and they’ll be taking Siobhan and moving somewhere else and leaving him here.

 

What he is not prepared for is Sebastian glancing into the other room and then leaning close and saying, “Tommy, look, we’re—we’re going to adopt you.”

 

“What,” Tommy says, and someday he hopes he will grow out of this unfortunate verbal habit and he suspects that life with a Moriarty means having plenty of opportunities to practice being shocked and what.

 

“If you want,” says Sebastian hastily, “You don’t have to, obviously, we can still send you to uni, but we thought—“

 

“Yes,” says Tommy, a bit hoarse for no reason, “yes, of course, I want—but my parents, I—“

 

“Leave it to Jim,” Sebastian interrupts, and he sounds terribly fond when he says, “You haven’t had a chance to see him work, not really, he’s wasted here—“ he cuts off quickly and glances into the other room, where Tommy has been half-monitoring the tone of Siobhan’s voice. It’s rising, still well within safe range, but there must be something in Moriarty’s tone that he cannot hear, because Sebastian swears under his breath. He takes a step towards the door and then hesitates, turning back to Tommy.

 

“I’m. Well, I’m glad, Tommy.” He reaches out and Tommy makes a half-movement towards him automatically, and Sebastian’s hand, instead of falling on the curve of his arm into his shoulder, brushes along the side of his neck and lands with thumb almost on Tommy’s pulse. They freeze like that for a moment, and then Sebastian smiles slightly and says, “Don’t tell those two—they wanted to spring it on you at dinner. Try to look surprised, at least. I didn’t think that it was fair.”

 

“Thank you,” Tommy says, body buzzing painfully with gratitude, and then there is a shattering sound and Sebastian bolts for the door. “Dammit, boss,” Tommy can hear him saying, “We’ve only got the one spare—put that _down_ , Jim!”

 

“We need degree markers,” Siobhan says, voice reasonable, and Tommy rolls his eyes and goes to join Sebastian. His neck is very warm, and the taste of his own pulse is thick on his tongue.

 

 

 

Sebastian is right, of course. Moriarty is—well. Tommy feels a bit dizzy just watching him, and he cannot conceive of what it might be like to have that turned on him. He’s used to thinking of Siobhan and her mum as essentially the same, with a difference of years and training and gender—though he’s none too certain on where that line falls for either of them, or if they draw it at all. Sex, at least. And of course Moriarty is unstudied, unknown, terrifying and unpredictable, where Siobhan is unpredictable within set parameters that he can work with.

 

But he has never seen Siobhan do anything remotely like what Moriarty is doing. He’s—he’s the same man, Tommy thinks, he’s recognizable; there’s no sense that he had been replaced by some stranger, because that would be simple, just Jim shrugging on a new skin the way Tommy has seen him teaching Siobhan to, being shopkeepers and teachers and Sebastian and even Tommy, a thing he thinks he should have found far more upsetting than he did.

 

Moriarty is himself, utterly. And Moriarty is charming to the point of flirting with Tommy’s mother, setting her blushing in a way Tommy has only seen when certain songs come on the radio, her up to her elbows in dishwater and his father standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her, humming into her neck. Tommy can see his father, at first, begin to frown, wrists tightening by his sides, and then Moriarty turns to him, and it’s—it’s unsettling.

 

There’s almost the same edge of flirting there, Tommy is horrified to see, but this time it is Moriarty who is blushing, just the slightest edge at his ears and neckline, the slightest edge of deference that has the slightest edge of fear, so fine as to be almost invisible, but it’s muddled together with a hint of awe and a hint of real attraction, a slight leaning away and then back, a hesitation at the swell of his shoulders and arms. It’s more sexual than it is with his mother, and Tommy does not want to be thinking these things, but it’s a flawless blend of apologetic attraction and bashful intimidation, utterly unthreatening, and his father responds beautifully, loosening and curving towards Moriarty the way Tommy’s mother does, and his body language changes by shattered-porcelain degrees, becoming gentle, forgiving. Then Sebastian comes in from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel, large and warm and solid in his denim and wrinkled shirt. Jim darts to him at once, reaches up a bit—and Moriarty, Tommy thinks, has never been this short before—and puts a hand on his arm in a way that is all affection and no sexuality, and tells Tommy’s mother how lucky he is to have a man who can cook, and when Sebastian leans down and kisses him on the cheek he blushes pink in a not-quite-attractive way all through his cheeks and looks scandalized. “Sebby, not in front of the _children_ ,” he says, and then immediately, quick afterthought, “or the guests!”

 

Tommy, who has come home with Siobhan to find Moriarty leaning lazy and pleased against a wall, pupils blown and with bruises on his neck, Sebastian standing very firmly at the sink, back to them, red-naped and washing clean cups, feels as though he should have been given more warning.

 

They go into the dining room and sit at the table (forty-five degrees), Tommy and Siobhan across from his parents and Sebastian and Jim at the head and foot of the table. Tommy knows that his parents don’t stand a chance against Jim, not like this, and he watches the conversation move in a way that seems completely natural from how lucky the Morans are to have Siobhan—Jim calls her their blessing, and Siobhan rolls her eyes, and Sebastian chuckles  as though he’s seen it a hundred times before –and then how lucky they are that their children are such good friends—Jim hesitating just a moment before the word, Sebastian watching Tommy’s parents, eyebrows raised in slight and obvious question, and his mother smiles the small secretive smile that hurts Tommy’s chest and his father coughs a bit and changes the subject to uni, to what Siobhan is planning to do, and by the time Jim’s brought around tea—“sit down, darling, I know I can’t cook but I can at _least_ clear up and boil water,” Sebastian rolling his eyes and leaning back in his chair to call after Jim “Fine, but let me handle the tea bags” and then false-whispering to Tommy’s mother, “tears them open, every time, I don’t know how he manages it—“ Tommy’s parents are admitting that they’d love to send him to uni, of course, but with the farm—and Jim is saying that it’s just such a shame, he hates to send Siobhan off without anyone, Siobhan cutting in that she is an adult and can take of herself, and all the adults exchanging knowing not-quite-amused looks, and he’s not smart but he knows how a system works, so he says, half-abashed, “You know I’d go with you if I could, Bhan,” and then Jim and Sebastian exchange a look across the table. Jim reaches out and puts his hand on the table, and Sebastian does the same, movements so clearly familiar that it is as though they are touching across the space.

 

“Actually,” Sebastian says, quietly and a bit awkwardly, “We—Jim and I, I mean—have been talking about that.”

 

Tommy wonders, later, whether he should be hurt that his parents were not more resistant. He wonders if they are hurt to not be more surprised. But by the end of that first cup it’s been agreed that of course tuition is a small price to pay to know that Siobhan has a friend at uni, that of course they’ll be going to the same school (his parents not questioning it any more than they’ve questioned any of the suddenly-high grades he’s brought home over the past eight years), and then there’s a pause. Sebastian looks a little relieved, a little satisfied, and his body language is relaxed and contented, one teammate to another as he talks to Tommy’s father. And then Jim clears his throat.

 

“Actually,” he says, and his voice is a little high, “I—well, I haven’t discussed this with Sebastian, really. But I—well. My family.” He looks a bit uncomfortable. “We—there aren’t many of us left, you know how it is with—our kind of people.” Tommy’s parents, on the edge of the cloud of mystery Dalkey is determined to see around Jim’s origins, are silent, cups sitting untouched. “Jim,” says Sebastian quietly, no objection, voice just comfort. Jim swallows and smiles at him. He’s looking at his plate as he says “I know—this isn’t the life you planned for Tommy. I feel as though we’re stealing him away from you, as though we’re setting him on a completely different path that he wasn’t raised for—“ Tommy’s father stiffens slightly, and Jim says hastily “because there was no way you could have seen this, even we’re still a bit surprised, really—not that he isn’t a delight, of course, we’re so happy to have him around the house.”

 

He takes a deep breath. “But, I was saying—my family. I don’t want to talk about it—I left all that behind,” and he looks at Sebastian as though he does not know he is doing it. “But it—there are certain things left behind that I could, well. Could be picked back up.” He hesitates and Tommy can _see_ his parents watching Jim decide not to come right out and say, _trust fund_. _Connections._  “And of course Siobhan has a right to all of that, now—but we were wondering. Tommy feels so much like part of the family.”

 

There’s more, of course: a great deal of delicacy and things not being quite said. But by the end of the night, Tommy’s parents leave and Sebastian promises to send them the paperwork. They look happy, Tommy thinks, but when his mother hugs him and whispers “I’m still your mother, Thomas O’Doyle—I expect to see you every break, and you write us” she leaves moisture behind. His father shakes his hand and says that he’ll expect Tommy home tomorrow—“even if Fiona is going to take the farm, don’t think you’re getting out of your chores, young man.” They look predictably small, heading down the hill towards home, and Siobhan is slender and warm at his side.

                                                                                                                


	7. Dinner and a Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things move along.

Sebastian pulls him aside before the dinner. Tommy’s already a bit nervous in a way he cannot put a name to; some strange embarrassed sort of distress at the thought of the two pieces of his life coming together like this. It’s not that his parents have never met the Morans before; they’ve run into each other often enough at school functions or at the market and every time it happened, his mother or Mr. Moran would say, _sometime we should really have dinner together, at least—what with the children_ , and then his mother would look fondly and pointedly at Tommy and Siobhan, or Mr. Moran would lay a firm hand on Jim’s neck and smile emptily. But somehow it never quite happened, and after a year or two Tommy came to recognize it as polite noise, like talk about the weather or _how_ are _you, really_.

 

It’s the beginning of their last year of Secondary, though, and there has been some strange shift. Now his parents are coming over for dinner and he didn’t even know until a few days ago, when Siobhan told him in the tone that made it clear he should have already been aware of it. But that wasn’t the first sign of it; a few months ago Sebastian started watching him a bit differently; the same kind of proprietary look he gets sometimes when he watches Siobhan and Jim bent over some complex system of wires or viscera, when he thinks they can’t see him. Mr. Moriarty is—well, he’s been watching Tommy, which alone is fairly new, since normally he treats Tommy as a sort of living breathing piece of furniture. But now sometimes Tommy see him out of the corner of his eye watching him with the same kind of weighing look Moriarty gets when he tries a new bread Sebastian is making.

 

Tommy isn’t smart the way Siobhan is, but he sees things. Especially differences. And his parents are having dinner with the Morans, and Siobhan is by turns dismissing him completely and focusing on him intently enough that he wishes she would find a girl to distract her, the way she did last summer, even if it still didn’t go anywhere. So when Sebastian pulls him aside, Jim and Siobhan arguing in a mostly-complacent way about whether the dining room table should be at a ninety or forty five degree angle in the other room, Tommy is prepared for the worst—to be told that, say, Mr. Moran is dying, or Siobhan has killed someone and the trial is coming up, or simply that they’ve all discussed it and Tommy doesn’t quite fit in around the house and it would be best if he didn’t come round anymore and they’ll be taking Siobhan and moving somewhere else and leaving him here.

 

What he is not prepared for is Sebastian glancing into the other room and then leaning close and saying, “Tommy, look, we’re—we’re going to adopt you.”

 

“What,” Tommy says, and someday he hopes he will grow out of this unfortunate verbal habit and he suspects that life with a Moriarty means having plenty of opportunities to practice being shocked and what.

 

“If you want,” says Sebastian hastily, “You don’t have to, obviously, we can still send you to uni, but we thought—“

 

“Yes,” says Tommy, a bit hoarse for no reason, “yes, of course, I want—but my parents, I—“

 

“Leave it to Jim,” Sebastian interrupts, and he sounds terribly fond when he says, “You haven’t had a chance to see him work, not really, he’s wasted here—“ he cuts off quickly and glances into the other room, where Tommy has been half-monitoring the tone of Siobhan’s voice. It’s rising, still well within safe range, but there must be something in Moriarty’s tone that he cannot hear, because Sebastian swears under his breath. He takes a step towards the door and then hesitates, turning back to Tommy.

 

“I’m. Well, I’m glad, Tommy.” He reaches out and Tommy makes a half-movement towards him automatically, and Sebastian’s hand, instead of falling on the curve of his arm into his shoulder, brushes along the side of his neck and lands with thumb almost on Tommy’s pulse. They freeze like that for a moment, and then Sebastian smiles slightly and says, “Don’t tell those two—they wanted to spring it on you at dinner. Try to look surprised, at least. I didn’t think that it was fair.”

 

“Thank you,” Tommy says, body buzzing painfully with gratitude, and then there is a shattering sound and Sebastian bolts for the door. “Dammit, boss,” Tommy can hear him saying, “We’ve only got the one spare—put that _down_ , Jim!”

 

“We need degree markers,” Siobhan says, voice reasonable, and Tommy rolls his eyes and goes to join Sebastian. His neck is very warm, and the taste of his own pulse is thick on his tongue.

 

 

 

Sebastian is right, of course. Moriarty is—well. Tommy feels a bit dizzy just watching him, and he cannot conceive of what it might be like to have that turned on him. He’s used to thinking of Siobhan and her mum as essentially the same, with a difference of years and training and gender—though he’s none too certain on where that line falls for either of them, or if they draw it at all. Sex, at least. And of course Moriarty is unstudied, unknown, terrifying and unpredictable, where Siobhan is unpredictable within set parameters that he can work with.

 

But he has never seen Siobhan do anything remotely like what Moriarty is doing. He’s—he’s the same man, Tommy thinks, he’s recognizable; there’s no sense that he had been replaced by some stranger, because that would be simple, just Jim shrugging on a new skin the way Tommy has seen him teaching Siobhan to, being shopkeepers and teachers and Sebastian and even Tommy, a thing he thinks he should have found far more upsetting than he did.

 

Moriarty is himself, utterly. And Moriarty is charming to the point of flirting with Tommy’s mother, setting her blushing in a way Tommy has only seen when certain songs come on the radio, her up to her elbows in dishwater and his father standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her, humming into her neck. Tommy can see his father, at first, begin to frown, wrists tightening by his sides, and then Moriarty turns to him, and it’s—it’s unsettling.

 

There’s almost the same edge of flirting there, Tommy is horrified to see, but this time it is Moriarty who is blushing, just the slightest edge at his ears and neckline, the slightest edge of deference that has the slightest edge of fear, so fine as to be almost invisible, but it’s muddled together with a hint of awe and a hint of real attraction, a slight leaning away and then back, a hesitation at the swell of his shoulders and arms. It’s more sexual than it is with his mother, and Tommy does not want to be thinking these things, but it’s a flawless blend of apologetic attraction and bashful intimidation, utterly unthreatening, and his father responds beautifully, loosening and curving towards Moriarty the way Tommy’s mother does, and his body language changes by shattered-porcelain degrees, becoming gentle, forgiving. Then Sebastian comes in from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel, large and warm and solid in his denim and wrinkled shirt. Jim darts to him at once, reaches up a bit—and Moriarty, Tommy thinks, has never been this short before—and puts a hand on his arm in a way that is all affection and no sexuality, and tells Tommy’s mother how lucky he is to have a man who can cook, and when Sebastian leans down and kisses him on the cheek he blushes pink in a not-quite-attractive way all through his cheeks and looks scandalized. “Sebby, not in front of the _children_ ,” he says, and then immediately, quick afterthought, “or the guests!”

 

Tommy, who has come home with Siobhan to find Moriarty leaning lazy and pleased against a wall, pupils blown and with bruises on his neck, Sebastian standing very firmly at the sink, back to them, red-naped and washing clean cups, feels as though he should have been given more warning.

 

They go into the dining room and sit at the table (forty-five degrees), Tommy and Siobhan across from his parents and Sebastian and Jim at the head and foot of the table. Tommy knows that his parents don’t stand a chance against Jim, not like this, and he watches the conversation move in a way that seems completely natural from how lucky the Morans are to have Siobhan—Jim calls her their blessing, and Siobhan rolls her eyes, and Sebastian chuckles  as though he’s seen it a hundred times before –and then how lucky they are that their children are such good friends—Jim hesitating just a moment before the word, Sebastian watching Tommy’s parents, eyebrows raised in slight and obvious question, and his mother smiles the small secretive smile that hurts Tommy’s chest and his father coughs a bit and changes the subject to uni, to what Siobhan is planning to do, and by the time Jim’s brought around tea—“sit down, darling, I know I can’t cook but I can at _least_ clear up and boil water,” Sebastian rolling his eyes and leaning back in his chair to call after Jim “Fine, but let me handle the tea bags” and then false-whispering to Tommy’s mother, “tears them open, every time, I don’t know how he manages it—“ Tommy’s parents are admitting that they’d love to send him to uni, of course, but with the farm—and Jim is saying that it’s just such a shame, he hates to send Siobhan off without anyone, Siobhan cutting in that she is an adult and can take of herself, and all the adults exchanging knowing not-quite-amused looks, and he’s not smart but he knows how a system works, so he says, half-abashed, “You know I’d go with you if I could, Bhan,” and then Jim and Sebastian exchange a look across the table. Jim reaches out and puts his hand on the table, and Sebastian does the same, movements so clearly familiar that it is as though they are touching across the space.

 

“Actually,” Sebastian says, quietly and a bit awkwardly, “We—Jim and I, I mean—have been talking about that.”

 

Tommy wonders, later, whether he should be hurt that his parents were not more resistant. He wonders if they are hurt to not be more surprised. But by the end of that first cup it’s been agreed that of course tuition is a small price to pay to know that Siobhan has a friend at uni, that of course they’ll be going to the same school (his parents not questioning it any more than they’ve questioned any of the suddenly-high grades he’s brought home over the past eight years), and then there’s a pause. Sebastian looks a little relieved, a little satisfied, and his body language is relaxed and contented, one teammate to another as he talks to Tommy’s father. And then Jim clears his throat.

 

“Actually,” he says, and his voice is a little high, “I—well, I haven’t discussed this with Sebastian, really. But I—well. My family.” He looks a bit uncomfortable. “We—there aren’t many of us left, you know how it is with—our kind of people.” Tommy’s parents, on the edge of the cloud of mystery Dalkey is determined to see around Jim’s origins, are silent, cups sitting untouched. “Jim,” says Sebastian quietly, no objection, voice just comfort. Jim swallows and smiles at him. He’s looking at his plate as he says “I know—this isn’t the life you planned for Tommy. I feel as though we’re stealing him away from you, as though we’re setting him on a completely different path that he wasn’t raised for—“ Tommy’s father stiffens slightly, and Jim says hastily “because there was no way you could have seen this, even we’re still a bit surprised, really—not that he isn’t a delight, of course, we’re so happy to have him around the house.”

 

He takes a deep breath. “But, I was saying—my family. I don’t want to talk about it—I left all that behind,” and he looks at Sebastian as though he does not know he is doing it. “But it—there are certain things left behind that I could, well. Could be picked back up.” He hesitates and Tommy can _see_ his parents watching Jim decide not to come right out and say, _trust fund_. _Connections._  “And of course Siobhan has a right to all of that, now—but we were wondering. Tommy feels so much like part of the family.”

 

There’s more, of course: a great deal of delicacy and things not being quite said. But by the end of the night, Tommy’s parents leave and Sebastian promises to send them the paperwork. They look happy, Tommy thinks, but when his mother hugs him and whispers “I’m still your mother, Thomas O’Doyle—I expect to see you every break, and you write us” she leaves moisture behind. His father shakes his hand and says that he’ll expect Tommy home tomorrow—“even if Fiona is going to take the farm, don’t think you’re getting out of your chores, young man.” They look predictably small, heading down the hill towards home, and Siobhan is slender and warm at his side.

                                                                                                                


	8. Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then they don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning/spoiler; see note at end if you'd rather be spoiled than risk it. Some very mild sexual content.

“I don’t like her.” Tommy is in the doorway, hands loosely clenched, not quite fists, and Siobhan won’t look at him.

  
“I know.”

  
“She’s not—you do?” She rarely looks at him, has never looked at him much and he has always found her combination of unexamined acceptance and dismissal a relief. She won’t look at him.

  
“Yes.”

  
“Then why—?”

  
“Because I don’t care.”

After a moment she turns a page of her book, a muscle in her arm near the shoulder jumping. “I don’t care what you think about her,” and her voice is all wrong, sharp when it should be blank and ugly where it should be sharp, clean as her father’s knives, and she isn’t done and she won’t look at him. “I don’t care, Tommy, because she is my girlfriend, and as you are neither her partner nor mine, it is precisely none of your business.”

  
It is all wrong, and Tommy has to fight the urge to simply step back and let Siobhan take care of it, because that is what she does, she takes care of things, and he takes care of her, and. “Yes I am.”

  
She tears a page out of her book, slow and precise, and the noise is loud and overwhelming. For a moment while it surrounds him, Tommy wonders if this is how it always is for her, and for Moriarty, this terrible pull of almost too much, of not knowing what too much will be, and he is blind with the clarity of complete sensation.

Then the page is out, and she’s stroking her fingers over the rough edge, slow and precise.

“Oh? Do you and Amy have something to tell me?” Her voice is mocking in a way it never is with Tommy—she has been cruel to him, made him cry a few times as children, has called him thick and hopeless and been harsh and scornful and dismissive and a thousand other things he thinks would be terrible, from anyone else, but she has never mocked him. She won’t look at him.

“No! No, god. I—you are. I’m your partner, Siobhan.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes I am,” he says, furious in a way that feels familiar and ancient, the years before Siobhan and feeling constantly cheated and not quite there and not good enough and not useful or worthwhile or anything, a choked-off kind of boredom that made him lash out—but one that kept him strong. Stronger than anyone in the class, and he was larger, too, and he had fewer and fewer people to lash out at until there was no one left who didn’t flinch away, no one who rose to him, and he pushed it down and pushed it down and could feel it building under his teeth,  the line of his gums.

Then Siobhan came, and watched him, and he ignored her—because she was a year and two feet below him, because he wanted someone who could push back—and then she showed up on his doorstep. And for almost a full week he thought that here, finally, was someone who would rise to him, would push back—and then she took him into the woods and broke two of his fingers and he tore her shirt and she pushed him into the dirt and knelt on his throat and he realized. And he rose.

They told his parents that she had fallen out of a tree and he had broken the fingers trying to catch her, and his mother clucked and his father swore again that he would take the dead branches down. They told her parents the same thing, and her father rolled his eyes and her mother spent twenty minutes lecturing them on bone structure and the differences between torsion and shock breaks.  Mr. Moran resplinted his fingers and told him he expected a better story next time, and Tommy went home.

“I’m your partner,” he says again, voice too loud, and she slams the book shut.

“No,” she says, staring at the wall in front of her desk, “You are not, Tommy.”

The hum of schoolyard dirt in his ears.  _Rise_. “Yes I am. I’m your partner, yours—Mr. Moran—“

“Shut up,” she says, her voice echoing oddly and after a moment he realizes it is because he thought it was a shout, thought it would move through the small room like one and instead it falls, too quiet. “Just shut up, Tommy, for once, about my father—you’re not him, stop trying to be him, it’s stupid and it’s pathetic and I am not my mother.”

Her shoulders are bowed out and back so hard that she is taking gasping breaths, and Tommy rocks in the doorway, trying to hear her, trying to move closer and smooth hands over her bones and trying to move away and leave,  _rise_ , leave so he can unhear and not know these things.

“I am not my mother,” she repeats, and laughs, and it runs all wrong over Tommy’s skin. “I’m not a Moriarty, Tommy, do you hear me?” She stands up, and the chair almost tips over before she catches it, and then she is moving around the room, almost cleaning, like an imitated behavior—picking things up and moving them somewhere else, looping back to put them in a third one, and Tommy feels the tendons in his palms pop and pull. She won’t look at him.

“I don’t care what you think, and I am not a Moriarty,” her voice like something moving very quickly when you are too far away to see the motion. “Do you know why, Tommy?”

“Why?” he says, dreading the answer, knowing he does not have a choice, that he will rise to the question every time.

She spins towards him, arms held away from her body, legs slightly spread, balancing on the balls of her toes. “Because,” she says, and meets his eyes, and he has never been able to read anyone’s eyes, most of all hers, because they are just eyes and they are dark and the pupils are too wide and that is all he knows from them but he knows they are wrong, and she is not quite laughing anymore but her throat is working as though she is, “I love her, Tommy.”

He can feel himself flush, for no reason, can feel all the blood leave his face and then twist back in, raw and ugly under his skin.

“Remember, Tommy,” she says, and she is moving like Moriarty now, a slow twisting prowl that he has never found unsettling in her skin before, “Moriartys don’t fall in love,” and she speaks like Moriarty, a perfect echo of his mocking, “you can’t expect them to be like other people.” She doesn’t have the proper space to stalk in this room and it’s all slowed down, and she’s coming closer and closer and it is one of the only times Tommy can remember being afraid of what she was going to do. “They feel things differently,” she recites, and her voice is Seb’s now, higher, but the tone and the diction are there and Tommy can feel the blood spread through the rest of his face, “Keep an eye on her, Tommy—they can get unpredictable, sometimes. I don’t know how she’ll take to uni. Jim—well. She’s a Moriarty, Tommy. Keep her safe.”

She’s close enough that he can smell her familiar scent, jasmine and the dark heaviness that always floats around Moriarty, and when she draws a breath her skin brushes against his shirt. It’s no closer than they’ve been before; less close, even, because they have been skin-to-skin or skin-to-shirt often enough, but it is a terrible thing now, a threat and a promise and he does not know which is worse. She leans up against him and laughs, low, into his ear, back in Jim’s skin, and runs her hand down his chest. He takes a breath to speak— _rise_ —and then:

“I’m not a Moriarty,” she says, and slips into Sebastian’s almost-drawl,“Thomas Moran,” and presses her cold lips against his cheek.

His back is already at the door and he scrambles for the handle without thinking about it, without thinking of the fact that he has never wanted to flee from her before and what that means, that it is now, and as he grasps the handle she pulls back, a quick toss of her head that sends black hair into his eyes and mouth and leaves a scent behind thick on his tongue as she says, “She’s coming over tonight. Go away, Tommy, and don’t come back at least until tomorrow morning. Go stay with Derek, or Ken, or whoever it is this week—I don’t care. Just get out.”

She isn’t looking at him, again, but Tommy finds he does not care.

“Siobhan,” and he does not have anything else to say but it does not matter.

“Chevonne,” she says, stone-calm. “That’s how Amy pronounces it.”

“Siobhán,” he says, the pronunciation thick and awkward on his tongue. She shuts the door on him and he stares at it, thinking, _rise_.

The word follows him, down the hall and across campus to Kyle’s room, is on the tip of his tongue the whole night, so that he has to bite it back when he comes, jerks awake at three from a half-doze, the taste of the harsh sibilant on his lips, Kyle’s face pressed into the skin of his shoulder. It must have been aloud, because Kyle is already half-awake, complacent and cranky and for a moment Tommy thinks he might be able to forget it, just roll Kyle over and— _rise_.

He gives up. There is nothing she can do to him, realistically, that she hasn’t done before, no matter how angry she is, and when he tries to gently extricate himself Kyle wakes up more completely and says “What—oh. Tell her hello for me.”

“I will,” Tommy lies, and the word is pounding in his head, now, the pressure of a headache without the pain, keeping rhythm with his footsteps across campus and louder in the too-silent hall.  _Rise. Rise. Rise_ , and he slams open the door, his pulse pounding in his ears.

Siobhan’s blood on the floor, and her arms curled limp in towards her body, and he cannot tell if she is looking at him or is even conscious, and she murmurs something, almost audible, that might be _rise_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Suicide, blood, a fair amount of verbal conflict


End file.
